Three 14-foot-high monster trucks will crush six cars, race through an obstacle course and pop wheelies. Then there's the clowning around by squat miniature trucks. The finale: the car-eating Transzilla transformer truck, always popular with children.

Usually the promoters stockpile enough dirt in advance in the area of the show to fill the 15 truckloads needed to put on the mud bog competition.

But since this was the competition's first time in West Palm Beach, Bougus had to dig up some dirt.

He searched all over the county on Thursday, and by late afternoon, he worked out an arrangement with a local water utilities plant to use six truckloads of muck scraped off the bottom of the plant's drainage ponds. It was added to the sand and dirt he had already dug up. The resulting 800 cubic yards of stuff was mixed in a giant "bathtub" with the help of a firehose to create the mud.

The dirt is one of the most expensive elements in producing the show, said Bob Sabourin, Bougus' partner in Indoor Sports, Inc.

"It's a very special thing," Sabourin said. "In Florida, you have to pay a special price. We've been using the same dirt for 16 years in Jacksonville."

On top of that, the West Palm auditorium is more challenging than most because it's smaller than most arenas. The typical arena for the show is about 240 feet by 150 feet, Bougus said.

The auditorium arena is 200 feet by 100 feet.

The bay doors are 10 feet wide, and the monster trucks are almost 14 feet wide. The three monster trucks were brought into the auditorium on regular-sized tires and the giant tires were added once the vehicles were in the building.

The smaller space means shorter turnaround time for competitors. The supermodified mud trucks have wires attached that automatically turn off the engines when they reach 100 feet in the mud pit.

But then again, the shorter turnaround can be fun, said Sabourin.

"It makes it more exciting," he said. "They've got to make quick turns before they hit the wall."